1 John 2:18

4. Nor must we accept the many antichrists whose coming marks the closing age, 1 John 2:18-19.

18. Little children The third in the second triad of ages, commenced but unfinished in 1 John 2:14. It now occurs because our apostle is about to mention a last time through which the younger portion of his audience will have passed and beheld its results.

The last time Literally, a last hour. It is in the Greek without the definite article, like similar phrases in 1 Timothy 4:1, 2 Timothy 3:1, (where see notes,) which indicate a closing period, (namely, of the apostolic age,) rather than the close of earthly time. The absence of the article does not, apart from the context, fully prove that the reference is not to the second advent; for in 1 Peter 1:5 the second advent is unquestionably designated as a final period, and in Jude 1:18, it is called a last time. The second advent is of course a last hour, but a last hour is with no certainty the second advent. See note on 2 Peter 3:3. It is by the context that the phrase here is fixed to mean a last hour rather than the last hour. A last hour bears the same relation to the last hour that the many elemental antichrists bear to the antichrist. Just as these many antichrists were typical of our final antichrist, of whom the readers had heard, so this last hour was typical of that last day of which they had learned. To make St. John say the close of the world is attested by the presence of the antichrist because there are now many antichrists is to make him reason inconsequently. These typical antichrists can only be adduced to prove a typical last hour. Huther incorrectly makes the apostle intimate that the many antichrists preceded the antichrist as immediate forerunner; but there is no reference in any word of the apostle to time, but to the relative character. Just so St. Paul declares that “the mystery of iniquity doth already work;” that is, the moral elements of the “man of sin” were now seminally existing in secret. Important on the antichrist and his time are our notes on Acts 8:9; Acts 6:5; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; 1 Timothy 4:1-4. The error of Huther, Alford, and many others, in applying this last time to the second advent ought, we should suppose, to have been prevented by Paul’s express warning to the Thessalonians that such language did not imply Christ’s near approach; as well as St. Peter’s caution in 2 Peter 3:8. See our Supplementary Note at close of Matthew 25:0. At the approaching close of his life our apostle saw that the withdrawal of his fellow apostles from this scene of things was the close of a historical cycle, and the development of the errorists foretold by Saint Paul had already approached; so that the hour was typical of that last period before the rise of antichrist, who precedes the last advent. It was just equivalent to St. Paul’s predictive phrase, addressed to this same Ephesus, “after my departure,” where these very many antichrists are foretold. To this we may perhaps add Grotius’s solution, that the last hour indicated the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish state. For although the destruction of Jerusalem was no organic part of the framework of the kingdom of God, and probably had past at the time this was written, yet it did, as predicted by Christ, coincide with and characterize as one element the closing apostolic cycle. See quotation from Hegesippus in note on 1 Timothy 4:1.

Ye have heard St. Paul early “told” the Thessalonians. 2 Thessalonians 2:5.

Antichrist An epithet used by St. John alone, here and 22; 1 John 4:3; 2 John 1:7. The word is rightly interpreted by Huther as “not simply the enemy of Christ, but the opposition-Christ; that is, the enemy of Christ who, under the lying guise of Christ, endeavours to destroy the work of Christ.” The fundamental mark of this antichrist St. John twice declares to be the denial that Christ was “flesh,” 1 John 4:3, and 2 John 1:7. And this was based on that assumption of the inherent evil of matter, which forbade marriage among the Gnostics, and which appears at the present day in the celibacy of the pope and his immense army of priests throughout the world, and in the promulgation of the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary. Huther is clear as to the identity of John’s antichrist with Saint Paul’s. “Rightly have almost all commentators understood that John understands under this enemy the same as Paul describes, 2 Thessalonians 2:3, etc. The points which appear in the picture of Paul, and those in the explanations of John, so coincide and answer to each other that there need be no doubt about it. According to both, the manifestation discloses itself in the Church by an exodus from it; for John says, (1 John 2:19,) the antichrists went out from us, and Paul (1 John 2:3) speaks of a revealed, and a falling away. Both describe him as a God-opposing evil nature. Paul figures him as the man of sin, the lawless: John as the spirit of antichrist, in antithesis to the spirit of God; and says of the antichrists who are animated by him that they are of the world. Both characterize him as a liar who strives to make the lie victorious over the truth. Both represent that he appears in the last time before the second advent of Christ. Then, also, if the name antichrist, ‘ αντιχριστος , is not strictly synonymous with the anti-lying, ο αντικειμονος , yet even this point in Paul’s picture is so significant as to show how striking John’s naming of the enemy is. And when Paul describes the man of sin as showing himself that he is God, he clearly implies that spurious incarnation of God which the very name of antichrist implies.” And we may add, as Huther does not, that as St. Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:2) expressly writes to show that he does not mean that either the man of sin or the day of Christ is really near at hand, so St. John does not mean by his last time and many antichrists that the second advent will be in his day.

Many antichrists last time As the antichrist identifies THE last time, so the many antichrists identify A last time.